Don’t Hold the Mayo

Little did I realize when sister suggested Whole30 that we’d be adopting a new lifestyle. I thought we’d do this for 30 days and it would be over. Au contraire mon amie. We’d be card carrying members if there were cards to carry.

Your all access pass is taking you into the kitchen. We’ve prepared food for the next few days and you get an up close and personal look into what goes on.

Let me set the mood for you.

Organized chaos.

On the menu – for more than one meal, not at the same time – meatloaf, sloppy joes and chicken salad. The first two require catsup and the third mayonnaise. What do you do when you can’t buy sugarless condiments?

You make them yourself.

Yes.

We did.

The quickest to make was chicken salad and it needed mayonnaise. In preparation I had taken a lemon and an egg out of the refrigerator the night before and there was no waiting for them to come to room temperature. And, having done this once before, there was no fear in the process.

I got everything in mise en place order and set to. Easy, right?

Fairly.

Do a step, take a picture. Do a step, take a picture. Do a step, you get the idea.

If your lemon and egg are room temperature ready it only takes a few minutes to come together. You put your ingredients in a jar, add an immersion blender and there’s mayonnaise. The hardest part is cleaning the blender once you’re done.

The chicken salad is also easy. It calls for canned chicken. If you prefer to shred your own chicken I’d estimate 2 – 2 ½ cups. You can add anything you want to chicken salad. To this one I added grapes and apples. I would have added celery but we were out.

Drain the chicken well. Put into a large bowl and break up with a fork. Add ½ cup mayonnaise and 1 ½ tsp apple cider vinegar and mix well. Add 1 cup of sliced grapes, 1 chopped apple and chopped pecans – I used what was on hand, possibly ½ cup. Gently fold in the fruit and pecans. It gets even better if you let it sit in the refrigerator for several hours. The end result is light and refreshing.

I know I post about not having cravings. But, for the sake of the blog, I just tasted it and I’d like more, please.

While I am making mayonnaise and chicken salad and doing steps and taking pictures, sister is in and out of the kitchen. She’s doing prep for the catsup and cooking zucchini. In between we’re reading recipes for the dishes to come and calling to one another across the kitchen.

“What comes next?”

“Garlic and salt.”

“How much?”

“A teaspoon.”

“That sounds like a lot.”

“Don’t put in a teaspoon. Do a half teaspoon.”

We both did well with the reintroduction of fordhook lima beans. Our next food group reintroduction is tomorrow. I got the order mixed up and thought it was non-gluten oats and it’s supposed to be corn. Sister put oats in the meatloaf thinking it would be next but now it has to wait until Sunday so the meatloaf goes in the freezer and we go back to the grocery store.